Ultimate Creature Investigations

We often assume that once students locate a resource they can take it from there with their note taking, but in my experience they often struggle to identify what information they should pull for their notes and what information is not relevant to their research.  Explicit teaching is needed as they identify what they "need to know" during the investigation phase.
So, we started the research process for our Ultimate Creature project, with a Close Reading activity, which taught students how to pull different categories of information from an unexpected source- poetry!  This connected to the learning students had been doing in English as well, as they were just wrapping up a poetry unit there.

Students were encouraged to read a short poem, which I had shared with them digitally.  They read the poem three times- once to experience the poetry in its entirety, and then to respond to two specific questions with annotations:

1. Highlight any characteristics or structures, which could be identified as adaptations in yellow.
2. Highlight any impact this creature might have on their biome in green.

After having this Close Reading experience independently they collaborated with those at their table, who had read the same poem, to see if they found the same things for adaptations and for biome connections and/ or what they could add to their own annotations.
We finished this with a group discussion on why some things were highlighted as adaptations and why others were biome connections, and how they would use this skill as they gathered sources and information for their specific animal type and biome.
To follow up this lesson we used Padlet to brainstorm specific questions that would help them identify the information they "Need to Know" for the different categories of information they are search for in preparation of creating their own Ultimate Creature.